{"id":270362,"date":"2019-03-31T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/b1028112"},"modified":"2019-03-31T04:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-31T10:00:00","slug":"it-didnt-even-have-to-end-that-way-secrets-about-the-how-i-met-your-mother-series-finale-you-probably-forgot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/music-news\/it-didnt-even-have-to-end-that-way-secrets-about-the-how-i-met-your-mother-series-finale-you-probably-forgot\/","title":{"rendered":"It Didn’t Even Have to End That Way: Secrets About the How I Met Your Mother Series Finale You Probably Forgot"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

Ending a TV show is hard work.<\/p>\n

At first, you’re surely overjoyed at the prospect of getting to finish telling your story on your own terms. After all, that’s not a fate that’s afforded to most. But then comes the time to actually, you know, decide how the thing will end. And when you do finally decide and commit to it, film the thing, and then say goodbye to your baby for good, you have to present it to a world of critics and fans who are just waiting to see you stick the landing. Or not. <\/p>\n

No one knows this more than Carter Bays<\/strong> and Craig Thomas<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

When the co-creators of How I Met Your Mother<\/em> finally brought their nine-season romantic mystery to a close five years ago, it’s hard to imagine a world in which they expected reactions to include such harsh words like “unsatisfying,” “disappointing,” or “betrayal.” And yet, that’s exactly what they were hit with after the final moments revealed\u2014five year old spoiler warning here\u2014that, after nine years listening to Ted Mosby (played by Josh Radnor<\/strong> with Bob Saget<\/a><\/strong> subbing in for the narration from the future) tell his kids the world’s most long-winded story about how he, you know, met their mother and a full final season dedicated to him finally meeting and falling for her, mom Tracy (Cristin Milioti<\/strong>) had been dead for six years from some mystery illness. And to add insult to injury, the whole thing turned into Ted asking his kids for permission to pursue his former love, “Aunt” Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders<\/a><\/strong>).<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

To say that fans were pissed was an understatement. Afterwards, both Carter and Bays took to Twitter to deliver what would be their only statements on the finale in the last five years\u2014requests to speak with either of the writers for this story were respectfully declined.  “If you didn’t like the finale, I guess that happens. We tried something and it didn’t connect with you. I hope we’re still friends,” Bays wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In his tweet, Thomas expressed nothing but gratitude. “Thank you all. I mean it: Every possible reaction to the last 44 minutes…thank you all…” he wrote<\/a>. “The fact that we have been a TV sitcom that has received this much passion from fans, for 9 years (not just tonight)\u2014thank you. We wrote a comedy with dramatic elements till [sic] the very end. Thanks for taking that ride with us.”<\/p>\n

“We did a finale about life’s twists and turns and that is not always what happens…but THANKS! Seriously – no matter what you thought of tonight, THANK YOU…you were with us,” he continued. “We love you. Thanks for this ride.”<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

The thing about the ending to the ride, though, is that it didn’t have to happen this way. As Bays tweeted a week after the divisive finale aired, he and Thomas had crafted an alternative ending to their long-running CBS sitcom that would be made available as a bonus feature when the complete series DVD collection was released that fall.<\/p>\n

“16 days ago today we were in the HIMYM<\/em> edit room, trying to decide between two very different endings. We only shot one script, but through edit room magic we had two possible outcomes for the series,” he wrote. “We chose the ending we chose and we stand by it. But we loved the other version too.”<\/p>\n

And chances are, viewers might’ve loved that one too.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

In the alternate ending, Tracy doesn’t die, Robin and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris<\/a><\/strong>) don’t get divorced, and everyone gets their happy ending without anyone getting offed in the process. If only.<\/p>\n

Speaking with press immediately afterwards, the show’s stars seemed to share some of the public’s misgivings about how it all ended. Radnor admitted to Vulture<\/a> that he’d known about the twist ending since the show’s early days, but didn’t expect Bays and Thomas would ever actually go through with it. <\/p>\n

“They had mentioned to me the twist about the mother in the first season, and I kind of put it out of my head,” he told the outlet. “I didn’t know if they would actually want to come back to it and do that, especially after Cristin, because she was so wonderful and the fans seemed to really take to her. So I asked them ‘Are you guys still doing that?’ And they said yeah.”<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Alyson Hannigan<\/a><\/strong>, who played Ted’s BFF Lily, admitted to Australian news site news.com.au<\/a> that she didn’t think the show should’ve ever gone through with Barney and Robin actually tying the knot\u2014despite the fact that the entire final season took place over their wedding weekend. “I didn’t think Barney should have ever gotten married,” she said. “I liked Barney and Robin. But in my heart, I always wanted her with Ted. I just feel they [Barney and Robin] shouldn’t have gotten married.”<\/p>\n

As both Hannigan and Radnor explained in their separate interviews, there was plenty of footage from the finale left on the cutting room floor.  “I was bummed they didn’t just make it a two-hour season-ender, so they would get to show certain parts [that were cut],” Hannigan said. “The table read for the finale was so good, so right<\/em>, but it was also like 14 hours long. So when I actually saw the final version of the show, I was like \u2018they cut out everything!'”<\/p>\n

“It just seemed too quick. Obviously it was a tear-jerker, but with all the stuff that got cut out it was too fast…like \u2018OK, now we’re going to find out the mum’s dead, then suddenly, OK \u2014 he’s with Robin now’, and you’re just like, \u2018wait, what happened?!'” she continued. “There was a funeral scene [that got cut], and all this stuff that I think the audience needed. They needed that time to process that information, instead of having it slap them in the face.”<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

According to Radnor, there was also a scene between him and Smulders set in a diner that he believed would’ve helped make the final twist regarding Ted and Robin sit a lot easier with the audience. At the very least, he thought, it would’ve helped make clear that Ted hadn’t been pining away for Robin the entire time he was married to Tracy. “They cut a scene that Cobie and I shot between Ted and Robin. I thought it was a really important scene and I talked to Carter and Craig about it,” he said. “I understand why they cut it, but I thought it laid in that Robin had been thinking about Ted all these years more than Ted had been thinking about Robin. But who knows?”<\/p>\n

Perhaps one of the reasons why Bays and Thomas remained so committed to their controversial conclusion was the fact that they filmed scenes for it. <\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

As actors Lyndsy Fonseca<\/strong> and David Henrie<\/strong>, who appeared as Ted’s grown children in brief scenes throughout the series, reacting to their dad’s story, admitted to TVLine<\/a>, their pivotal scene in the finale’s final moments was filmed back in season one because Henrie was going through puberty and the producers wanted to make sure he looked the same throughout the course of the show’s life, however long it might be.<\/p>\n

“Everyone abandoned the stage, and it was just me, Lyndsy and the two show creators,” Henrie revealed. “We had to sign [non-disclosure agreements] as far as secrecy.”<\/p>\n

Fonseca added, “We signed a confidentiality agreement saying that we would not say who the mother is. They also didn’t know how many years the show was going to go. They filmed the ending of the show then just to have it.”<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

And if the show hadn’t lived nearly as long as it did, the identity of the mom would’ve been a whole lot different. Had the show been canceled early into its run, Ted’s love interest introduced at the very end of the first season’s 13 episodes\u2014Ashley Williams<\/strong>‘ Victoria\u2014would’ve been the one. “Early on, I wanted Victoria to be the mom,” Hannigan told The Huffington Post<\/a> in 2015. “I guess Carter later said had we got canceled she would’ve been the mom. But, you know, somebody great would come on [the show] and we would be like, \u2018Yeah, we want her to be the mom,’ so it was sort of just like whoever was on for a long period of time. We’re like, \u2018Let her be the mom. Let her.’ We just loved everybody.”<\/p>\n

While there are plenty of fans who probably wish they’d never laid eyes on HIMYM<\/em>‘s complicated closer, at least one of the show’s stars has gone on record to say they actually never have. Jason Segel<\/a><\/strong>, who starred as Ted’s other BFF and Lily’s hubby Marshall Eriksen, told Australia’s The Daily Telegraph<\/a> in 2017, “If I am totally<\/em> honest, I never watched the ending. I’m aware of what happened, but there is something for me about leaving that show with an ellipsis. I like that in my own mind it’s still alive.”<\/p>\n

The good news in all this for Carter and Bays is that they’re not alone. How I Met Your Mother<\/em> is hardly the first series to deliver a finale that left its fan base feeling less than satisfied. In fact, they’re in some pretty good company.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\"Roseanne<\/div>\n

ABC<\/p>\n

Roseanne<\/em><\/h3>\n

Fans were stunned when ABC’s groundbreaking sitcom signed off after nine seasons with our titular heroine (played by Roseanne Barr<\/strong>) revealing that the entire final season had been a figment of her imagination, with her beloved husband Dan (John Goodman<\/strong>) having not actually survived his heart attack in the season prior. It was a callback to the character’s desire in the early seasons to become a writer by having Roseanne sitting at a typewriter, writing a different ending to her story, but it left viewers feeling like their time had been wasted in the worst way. When the show was revived in 2018 after 21 years, it forgot all about its controversial ending. Little did we know, something even more controversial was on the way…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"Dinosaurs<\/div>\n

ABC<\/p>\n

Dinosaurs<\/em><\/h3>\n

When ABC decided it was time to end this family-friendly sitcom starring puppet dinosaurs after four seasons, the creators decided to do it in the most depressing way possible by having its main character, Sinclair family patriarch Earl, triggering a catastrophic extinction event that would not only kill every main character, but his entire species. Bleak.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"James<\/div>\n

HBO<\/p>\n

The Sopranos<\/em><\/h3>\n

David Chase<\/strong>‘s iconic HBO mob drama ushered in modern day’s golden age of television. It also delivered one of the most controversial finales ever with a simple smash cut to black just as something\u2014maybe nefarious, maybe not\u2014was about to happen to the show’s iconic antihero, Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini<\/strong>). Did he meet his maker while feasting on a bowl of onion rings with his family? And did Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler<\/strong>) ever finish parallel parking? We will never know.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Article continues below<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"The<\/div>\n

The Good Wife<\/em><\/h3>\n

Sure, there was something poetic in the way the CBS legal drama’s final moments, which saw Alicia Florrick (Julianna Marguiles<\/strong>) slapped by Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski<\/strong>) after the former betrayed the latter, mirrored Alicia slapping her own betrayer in the show’s pilot, but the poetry wasn’t enough to rid the sour taste in everyone’s mouth left by co-creators Robert<\/strong> and Michelle King<\/strong>‘s decision to have Alicia become as corrupt as everyone else she’d ever come up against\u2014and all in the name of her husband, aka the man she’d slapped in the pilot!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"Penn<\/div>\n

CW<\/p>\n

Gossip Girl<\/em><\/h3>\n

Five simple words are all we need to explain why this iconic CW drama’s finale missed the mark: Dan Humphrey was Gossip Girl. In what world!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"Girls<\/div>\n

HBO<\/p>\n

Girls<\/em><\/h3>\n

If you hated the way Lena Dunham<\/strong>‘s HBO comedy ended, with a half-hour that focused merely on her Hannah Horvath with a bit of Allison Williams<\/strong>‘ Marnie thrown in, helping to raise Hannah’s baby, may we suggest you think of it as merely an ill-advised epilogue and allow the penultimate episode\u2014which saw Hannah saying goodbye to all of the titular girls in a truly emotionally effective half-hour\u2014to act as the show’s true finale. That’s what we do, at least. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Article continues below<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"Dexter,<\/div>\n

Randy Tepper\/Showtime<\/p>\n

Dexter<\/em><\/h3>\n

Watching Showtime’s serial killer thriller, one got the impression that the titular murderer (played by Michael C. Hall<\/strong>) might eventually have to, you know, pay for his many, many sins by the time all was said and done. Instead, his poor sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter<\/strong>) met her demise and he escaped Miami to restart as…a lumberjack in Oregon?! Never has a series finale more nakedly telegraphed the idea “We like this character and may want to do more with him some day” before.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"Lost<\/div>\n

ABC<\/p>\n

Lost<\/em><\/h3>\n

When Damon Lindelof<\/strong> and Carlton Cuse<\/strong> decided to end the mind-bending ABC mystery by getting metaphysical rather than giving some, you know, concrete answers about what had been going on for the last six seasons, not everyone was exactly thrilled. So, the island was purgatory, right? Right?!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"How<\/div>\n

Ron P. Jaffe\/Fox<\/p>\n

How I Met Your Mother<\/em><\/h3>\n

After nine seasons of listening to Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor<\/strong>) deliver one of the most long-winded stories in the world on the CBS sitcom, detailing how he met the mother of his children, fans were understandably horrified by the tossed-off way it was revealed that she’d been dead all along and Ted was, in fact, seeking his kid’s permission to pursue their aunt Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders<\/strong>). It was, uh, a choice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Article continues below<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"Seinfeld<\/div>\n

NBC<\/p>\n

Seinfeld<\/em><\/h3>\n

When the iconic NBC comedy signed off in 1998 after nine seasons, original co-creator Larry David<\/strong> returned to really drive home how little the show’s core four characters had learned\u2014and how kinda awful they’d been all along. A parade of returning guest stars testified about all the horrible things that had befallen them as a result of Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld<\/strong>), Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus<\/strong>), George (Jason Alexander<\/strong>), and Kramer’s (Michael Richards<\/strong>) extreme selfishness and, in the end, a judge threw them in jail for a full year as a result of it. And fans were PISSED.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

How I Met Your Mother<\/em> is available to stream, in its entirety, on Hulu.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

via:: E! Online<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ending a TV show is hard work. At first, you’re surely overjoyed at the prospect of getting to finish telling your story on your own terms. After all, that’s not a fate that’s afforded to most. But then comes the time to actually, you know, decide how the thing will end. And when you do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-270362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-25 09:26:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KIDN - The Lift FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kidn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}